Numeral Subjects in Polish: Surface Morphology vs. Abstract Syntax

Numeral subjects in Polish show a non-uniform agreement pattern with the verb depending on the cardinality of the numeral (paucal vs. high) and the gender of the NP. Full agreement shows with paucal numerals (<5) on non-virile NPs, while high numerals (≥5,) require default agreement (3 person, neuter, singular) on the verb. Paucal numerals combined with virile NPs may show either full agreement or default agreement, while high numerals with virile NPs show default agreement. Furthermore, high numerals combined with virile NPs show a surface morphological form of accusative/genitive, whereas high numerals combined with non-virile NPs show a surface morphological form of accusative/nominative. At the same time all the subtypes of the numeral subject share crucial syntactic properties with the standard nominative subject (e.g. coordination, anaphoric binding, control). This contribution reports on a plausible account of the morphological aspect of the overt (dis-)agreement between the numeral subject and the verb and proposes an account of an abstract syntactic relation between the numeral subject and Tense which resembles the standard procedure of nominative case marking.